


Specimen 1, Specimen 2, Specimen 3, Monster 0

by ckret2



Series: No Kings Only Monsters (KOTM continuity / related oneshots) [23]
Category: Godzilla (2014), Godzilla - All Media Types, Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Angst, Animal Abuse, Backstory, Gen, Government Experimentation, Medical Experimentation, MonsterVerse continuity but borrows heavily from Showa & Heisei, Origin Story, POV Second Person, Unethical Experimentation, but like when they're separate unrelated babies before they're heads, mention of one of Ghid's heads having a crush on another
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 01:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21329863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: Your family has bred dorats for centuries, passing the business down from mother to daughter. You do what you must to preserve your business and your family.And when the Xilien military marches in and requests three dorats for a classified experiment, you're unable to refuse.No matter what kind of monster they make from them.
Series: No Kings Only Monsters (KOTM continuity / related oneshots) [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1483448
Comments: 2
Kudos: 34





	Specimen 1, Specimen 2, Specimen 3, Monster 0

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely inspired by the prompt: "hi! if you're taking prompts, wouuuld you be willing to write another ghidorah x reader insert? i'm especially intrigued by your past idea about how if someone called them by their original names, they'd start bawling lmao i'd just love to see these guys get some of the aDORATion they deserve (i'm so sorry but i had to, this just can't be mere coincidence)"
> 
> Loosely because it's not really an "x reader insert" fic and it's more angst than adoration.
> 
> This is a blend of King G's Heisei and Showa portrayals. ME-319 (the viewpoint character) is intended to be a Xilien expy for Emmy Kano. "Female Xiliens are parthenogenetic" is an explanation for why they all look the same in Astro-Monster that doesn't depend on them being some sort of mass-produced clones. Pronouns! "She" = "Xilien who identifies as a parthenogenetic woman," "xe" = "non-parthenogenetic Xilien, regardless of sex," "he" = "person/animal from a species with no capacity for parthenogenesis, regardless of sex." Assume that all pronouns, names, terms, and everything else are translated to more familiar references for ease of the human reader's comprehension, ex: "There's a reference to pineapples, are you saying there are pineapples on Planet X?" No. No I'm not, that's a translation.
> 
> On tumblr I got some confusion from folks who weren't sure which dorat was supposed to be which of Ghidorah's heads, since they're referred to by pet names before they get ghidorafied. Folks, it ain't supposed to be a riddle. Ichi, Ni, and San are Japanese for One, Two, and Three; the Xilien military calls them Specimen 1, Specimen 2, and Specimen 3. Every time I refer to them by their pre-specimen pet names together in a list, I refer to them in one-two-three order.

You’re a dorat breeder.

The breeding bit isn’t difficult; for the most part, the dorats are perfectly happy to handle all of that themselves. Dorats have been domesticated since before recorded history, and have no trouble living and mating in indoor aeries as long as the rooms are large enough and the windows are tall and let in plenty of sunlight, natural or otherwise.

Your job is to keep them happy and healthy while they get on with their business: maintaining and cleaning your centuries-old three-story facility and the aeries suspended by chains far above the floor, keeping a close eye out for any dorats that look unwell or radiate sickly emotions to get them to a vet, keeping their food well-stocked, scheduling enough outdoor trips to ensure that the flight morphs get adequate exercise, and eventually selling them off to pet owners or to professionals whose work needs trained dorats.

You’re a woman—that is to say, in a more biological sense, you’re parthenogenetic—and although you’ve got distant cousins and a half-sibling who have fathers, you yourself only have a mother. You are the product of a single unbroken matrilineal line stretching back for over three hundred documented generations. And for several centuries, every cloned daughter in that line has been a dorat breeder. Not because you had to be—but because every one of you has wanted to be. You don’t know whether it’s in your genes, or whether _anyone_ would want to work with dorats after growing up around their indoor aeries. Nature or nurture? It doesn’t really matter, you suppose; you’re satisfied with your job, whatever reason you chose it.

You like working with dorats. You like the way they rush up to you in a concerned huddle when you arrive for work in a bad mood, threatening to bowl you over by hopping up on their legs and beating their wings for balance because they want to get closer to your face. You like the colors they come in, from pale jade greens to citrine oranges to a thousand different shades of yellow—gold and neon and amber and more—to warm silvers and pearl whites. You like the broad wingspans and commanding presence of the flight morphs, and the acrobatic energy and even the occasional hive mind-induced stampedes of the spinetail morphs. You like their songlike cries, their shiny scales, the comforting weight of their emotions, the way they switch instantly from sinuous grace to floppy wiggling messes.

You like how small and surprisingly soft the babies are, so little you can cradle them in your hands: their teeth like rows of tiny needles when they yawn, their heads a third of their weight, scrunching up their legs and tucking their wings around them to form little balls when they sleep. You like how agile and elegant the adults are, long and serpentine, their wings simultaneously delicate and powerful, smooth scales and sharp horns and spines—you can see why museums the world over are full of ancient artwork of dorats made from precious metals and gems. But you like the adolescents the most: that’s when they’re long, ridiculous, uncoordinated noodles, just shifting from the infants’ mix of slithering and bipedalism to full quadrupedalism, curious and hyperactive and quarrelsome with each other, constantly tripping over their rapidly expanding wings or getting their new tail spines tangled in everything from blankets to bushes to their own legs.

You’ve got about three dozen adolescents right now. You started with more hatchlings, but several have already been adopted. It’s an orangish-gold pack, all things told, although it wasn’t when they first hatched. The ones that are more green and white get adopted out fast as hatchlings, since they’re comparatively rare; so much so that when you sell them, you make your customers sign a contract stating they’re willing to bring them in to breed so that you can keep the colors in your gene pool.

Your current batch of adolescents is just beginning to head through puberty—as usual, at wildly different rates. Some already have horns that could pass for small but fully developed; some look like long babies, their heads and tails smooth and wings tiny. Most are in between. They still all play together, but already they’ve begun segregating themselves by morph when they’re relaxing, the adolescent flight morphs lounging near (but not too near) the adult flight morphs, the adolescent spinetail morphs piled together in a pack right next to the adult spinetail morphs.

As hatchlings, they already gave you solid impressions of their personalities—who’s withdrawn, who’s outgoing, who’s active, who’s lazy, who’s quarrelsome, who’s cooperative. As they enter adolescence and their mating instincts begin to activate, you’re starting to see more facets to their personalities.

And right now, you’re thinking very hard about the personalities of three specific adolescent dorats—their quirks, their oddities, their likes and dislikes, their talents and flaws, their futures.

You’re thinking about them because two soldiers and two scientists, wearing thin black shades and crisp gray uniforms, have dropped three reports on your desk: dossiers about Noodle, Sunshine, and Pineapple, as if they were persons of national interest rather than three baby pets.

###

Noodle has pretty white-ish gold scales, and—like _many_ near-white dorats that are more gold than silver—he also has awful flaky sheds that come off in strips and tend to cling for days, which makes him a far less appealing pet than most dorats as pale as him. (Some breeders try to sell flaky near-white dorats in between sheds and let the buyer deal with the periodic draconic dandruff, since it doesn’t count as a health issue that they’re legally required to report; you consider that unethical and always warn your prospective buyers.)

He’s sedate almost to the point of lethargy; his best skill is napping. Noodle’s definitely destined to be an indoor pet, which limits who you can adopt him out to. Hopefully even with his shedding problem, you’ll be able to find someone who wants him for his ability to lounge about looking pretty rather than for an exercise companion. Though he _will_ play enthusiastically and energetically with his peers, he tends to bow out early to watch the others play, passively absorbing their enjoyment via proximity rather than contributing to the empathic cloud of fun himself.

You suspect there’s an edge of sly intelligence to Noodle’s apparent idleness—perhaps he’s realized that by lounging in the right place, where he can empathically benefit from the other hatchlings’ entertainment without having to play himself, he can get more rewards with less effort. Would he be more active by himself, you wonder, if he had to work for his own entertainment? You might need to find someone to foster him for a few weeks to see what his personality is like when he’s not around dozens of other dorats before letting someone adopt him. But aside from the possibility that he might be a clever little slacker, Noodle’s a very unremarkable hatchling, all told.

Now that he’s reaching adolescence, though, and the first few spines on his tails are coming in, he’s demonstrated a new behavior quirk: when the adolescents separate by morph, rather that sitting with his fellow spinetails, he follows after the flight morphs and flops down amongst them. You wonder why. Does Noodle prefer the lighter psychic load of a crowd of flights? Does he think that if he socializes with them casually, then once they’re old enough to start worrying about breeding, his preferred choices in mates will consider him favorably without his having to expend any extra effort wooing them? Or perhaps he wants to be part of the audience when his fellow spinetails come by to make their first childish, halting attempts at mating displays: their heads lowered, small wings tucked away, and tails waving high in what they’ll soon have the muscles to develop into the spinetails’ signature whip crack/rattle. And if Noodle does want to watch, why—to learn from his peers’ techniques, or to admire them?

Broadly speaking, flight morphs tend to be more withdrawn than spinetail morphs—less inclined to socialize, less open with their ambient emotions. (Although there’s wide variation, of course, since the reach of a flight’s empathy is far broader but also under far more voluntary control than a spinetail’s. They can reduce their psychic influence—but they can also choose to cast it across a far greater distance than a spinetail ever could.)

But even taking into consideration flight morphs’ inclination toward tucking their emotions away to themselves, Sunshine—named for scales so bright yellow they’re almost fluorescent—is one of the most withdrawn flights you’ve ever seen. You actually took him to a veterinary neurologist to ensure he doesn’t have any kind of brain damage. The conclusion was he doesn’t, he just keeps his emotions clamped up tight inside his little head.

However, aside from that, Sunshine’s not skittish or sullen, and he doesn’t act like he’s being bullied or neglected by other dorats. He’s more violent than most, which along with the clamped up emotions is a warning sign for trauma or high stress. But he keeps his violence to play fighting, has never done real damage, and always stops when his playmate cries for mercy; so you think he’s just fond of fighting rather than lashing out due to anger. So you concluded that he’s just remarkably introverted and left him to it.

With the onset of puberty, though, Sunshine’s started to come out of his shell. He’s one of the most rapidly-developing dorats in this batch, both physically and emotionally. He’s already developed a couple of horns and a massive wingspan. He might have reached his adult wingspan, even, although the rest of his body hasn’t quite caught up with his wings yet; he looks terribly awkward strutting around, wings akimbo and chest lifted too high when he walks.

Sunshine was also among the first flights to take an interest in showing off for the spinetails; he’s been galumphing over to rear up on his legs and show off his wings since before they grew in. Now that they _have_ grown in, he’s attracting a lot more attention. (You wonder if the fact that his wingspan is disproportionate to the rest of his body makes spinetails think they look larger than they really are.) Some are flirting back, trotting up to rattle their tails or clap them on the floor if they don’t have spines yet, at which point Sunshine rebuffs them and galumphs back over to the flights’ company.

You wonder if he wants to flirt but not be flirted with because he doesn’t yet understand the purpose of the displays he’s practicing, or because he isn’t yet pleased with the quality of respondents. Showing off wings doubles as a mating display and a threat display, depending on who it’s directed at, so maybe he’s just doing it on instinct without having quite figured out the nuances of how to use it. Or maybe he’s hoping to stir up more play fights.

However, you suspect that Sunshine _is_ deliberately flirting. You’ve seen him off by himself, loner that he is, practicing popping—the mating display used mainly by flights, but sometimes by spinetails, where they stretch their wings as high as possible and then snap them down, producing a sharp pop of air and simultaneously shooting up. (You suspect that this display—and its effect on ceilings and light fixtures—is probably the leading cause behind most pet owners’ decisions to spay their flight dorats.) You don’t think he’d be training so diligently if he wasn’t aware of what he was doing. 

Conversely, among the spinetail morphs, the most physically developed so far is Pineapple—named for his unusually rough brownish-gold scales and their faint undertone of green. (In your opinion, he has the most interesting scales out of this batch of hatchings, which makes him your favorite, appearance-wise. The jades and pearls might be a hit with pet owners; but they’re easy to breed for with the right parents, while you don’t know if you could recreate Pineapple’s scales if you tried. Your pictures of him are a hit in breeders’ circles.)

He’s incredibly observant, and he’s strong-minded for a spinetail, able to break out of a strong emotional hive mind with next to no effort and inject new emotions without thinking. You’ve seen games stumble to a stop because Pineapple noticed a prospective buyer come in, or someone trip and fall out of a nest, or a kerfuffle break out across the room, and whatever new emotion the sight inspired in him was enough to disrupt everyone else’s concentration. You’ve had far fewer spinetail stampedes while he was here, at least among the hatchlings.

His capacity for inflicting emotions on his peers is almost on par with flight morphs’, except that as far as you’ve seen he can’t consciously regulate its effect. You think that Pineapple’s unique talent could make him a useful asset if he received professional training, although you don’t know of a specific field that would need a spinetail dorat with that kind of ability.

Pineapple is already larger than most of the other adolescents, has developed an impressive set of horns, and has a more even coverage of spines on his tail than any of the other spinetail morphs. They already rattle, which he seems to do involuntarily as he wiggles around in play, although he hasn’t made any whip cracks with his tail yet. However, emotionally he’s one of the slower developers. He’s practically still a hatchling in his behavior. He plays like he’s half his age. He bounces back and forth between flights and spinetails with seeming no recognition of how they’ve segregated themselves—although once he calms down he inevitably settles down amongst his fellow spinetails, so evidently he’s got _some_ recognition of their new social division. He neither joins the spinetails that go over to show off for the flights, nor acknowledges the flights that come to show off for them with anything more than vaguely curious disinterest.

Pineapple’s one of the last adolescents for whom you’ve developed _some_ sense of whether he’s likely to be an active or reactive partner—the one who approaches the opposite morph to put on mating displays, or the one who waits to be approached so that he can judge the display he’s presented with. It’s only in the last few days that you’ve seen Pineapple begin to watch the flirting flights more keenly, which suggests—but doesn’t guarantee—that he’ll be a reactive partner.

Noodle, Sunshine, and Pineapple. You don’t see their personalities in the dossiers on your desk. The photos on each cover sheet have them posed awkwardly and uncomfortably, heads raised and tails flat on the ground, just like all the photos of the adolescent dorats that the four military representatives took during their first visit weeks ago. In their photos, they look withdrawn and tense.

They’re listed by number rather than name.

###

Most of the dorats you breed become pets. But quite a few are taken to be trained to perform public services. Spinetail morphs are the most common service animal on X, and flight morphs are commonly used in counseling and psychological therapy. Many are trained as search and rescue animals: after fires, bombings, or natural disasters, when buried people can’t be found with sight, sound, smell, infrared, sonar, or x-ray, often dorats can still detect their minds. Dorats are absurdly adaptable to different environments and atmospheres; they’re often sent to new colonies to carry mail, pull heavy loads, and defend Xilien colonists from aliens. Low-empathy dorats can have the last of their empathy trained out of them or chemically suppressed and be used by the police or military.

You’ve never bred dorats for specific functions—hunting or therapy or what have you. You maintain thorough records of each dorat’s family tree, and some of their trees go back dozens of generations—calling on records kept by your mother and her mother and her mother et cetera—but none of them are what anybody would call “thoroughbreds.” All the same, plenty of your dorats have been snapped up for professional services before. Thoroughbreds have a higher chance of having the physical, psychic, and personality traits a job called for, yes, but also a higher chance of carrying detrimental genetic conditions. Many people who work regularly with dorats recognize the downsides of thoroughbreds and try to find the traits they need in aeries like yours.

So you were apprehensive, but not surprised, when four representatives of the military came in and asked to speak with you about your current selection of dorats.

In the style mandatory for all soldiers, police, and public officials interacting with civilians, they didn’t present you with so much as their ID numbers, much less their personal names. They instructed you to refer to them as Soldier 1, Scientist 2, Scientist 3, and Soldier 4. They referred to you by your matrilineal ID number, ME-319, which felt slightly more personal than calling you by your national ID number, but not by a lot.

“We are conducting a medical experiment with potential military applications that involves dorats,” Soldier 1 said. “Controller 0 has authorized very few details to be shared with civilians. We can tell you that we need three in early adolescence. We can tell you that this will be our seventh trial, and the first six concluded in a 100% fatality rate for our dorats specimens. We do not tell you this so that you will think that we are carelessly killing off dorats, but so that you will understand that we are frustrated and vexed every time another experiment fails and recognize that we are taking the utmost care with the dorats.” (You can tell that xe’s repeating something Controller 0 told xem to say—or, if not, at least that xe must work closely enough with Controller 0 to have picked up its mannerisms. The computer has a tendency to instruct the populace on how they should feel about its pronouncements and decisions; the inside of a Xilien mind is one of the few things it can’t control directly, and so it puts the onus on its citizens to control their minds for it.) “We are not, as you can tell, testing them en masse in hopes that one or two will survive, but testing only two and three at a time, and pouring our every resource into ensuring their survival in each trial. Their deaths are incompatible with our objectives.”

Despite yourself, you _did_ find yourself thinking that they must be exercising a great deal of caution with the dorats, 100% fatality rate notwithstanding. Still, though, you had to ask— “Why are you testing two and three at a time, then? Why not one?”

Soldier 1 was silent for a moment, and you suspected xe had a direct link to Controller 0 and was waiting for it to provide xem an answer that xe was allowed to share. “Because the very purpose of the experiment requires multiple test subjects,” xe finally said. “Our first four tests used only two dorats each. We found two insufficient for stable results. Our results improved when we began using three.”

So what was it, you wondered. Was the experiment about dorats’ empathic capabilities? Something else concerning their brains? Some new breeding experiments? What could require multiple dorats?

You suspected you’d never find out.

“What qualities are you looking for?” you asked them, with no further questions about the nature of the experiment; because, ultimately, it didn’t matter what they told you and whether or not you liked it. No matter what, you were going to comply. You _have_ to comply when Controller 0 comes knocking. Your only recourse for objection is if Controller 0 asks you for something and you know something it doesn’t that will help it get what it wants more expediently.

Shortly, Soldier 1 answered, “Compatibility with each other.”

“In what sense?” you asked. “Dorats that play together well? Genetic similarity?”

“Not genetic similarity,” Soldier 1 said. “Our initial tests were conducted with dorats of the same breed, to poor effect.” Xe grimaced almost immediately after speaking, and the next statement came from Scientist 2: “We have our own criteria by which we’ll determine compatibility. Once you have presented your pool of available dorats, we will monitor them ourselves until we have made a selection.” From the switch in speakers, you suspected that Soldier 1 had overstepped xir bounds and Controller 0 had revoked xir permission to lead the conversation.

“Monitor?” you asked. “In person? Or will you be setting up recording equipment?” You didn’t like the sound of either option.

“Both, most likely,” Scientist 2 said.

And so it was. Cameras designed to pick up visible light and heat energy were set up around the aeries. Most days, at least one of the four from the military was there—usually either Scientist 2 or Scientist 3—watching keenly while the adolescent dorats played, relaxed, and interacted; taking notes; and recording even more footage from various angles. After a few weeks, all four came in again, asked to speak with you in your office, and presented you with the three dossiers.

And here you are.

###

Here you are.

Looking down at the military’s records on Noodle, Sunshine, and Pineapple. Here you are.

“Why?” you ask. You wouldn’t have pegged the three of them for any sort of compatibility. You don’t know that you’ve ever seen any of them interact one-on-one with each other, much less all together.

There’s a pause as they wait for instructions from Controller 0; and then, with grim solemnity, Scientist 2 takes out a translucent badge and hands it to you. Congratulations: you’re now one clearance level above the average civilian.

Scientist 3 speaks. “These two, because Specimen 2—” xe taps on Sunshine’s dossier, “is sexually attracted to Specimen 3.” And then Pineapple’s. Something squeezes inside you. These are _adolescents_. They’re only playing around with flirting—when a flight and spinetail at this age _do_ pair off, they tussle and cuddle. Who was this army biologist with only a few weeks’ worth of footage to say that this awkward little thing with disproportionately large wings was anywhere near anything like sexual attraction?

You don’t say any of that. You say, very evenly, “Oh?”

“You’ve seen, no doubt, that he’s been putting on mating displays for the spinetail morphs,” Scientist 3 says. “We’ve analyzed multiple displays from multiple angles, and are absolutely certain that Specimen 3 is the only spinetail morph whom Specimen 2 is always facing when he displays. His brain activity and body temperature elevate when Specimen 3 takes note of his displays, but not when any other spinetail morphs do.”

Specimens 2, Specimen 3. They’ve already been numbered.

“Specimen 3 does not appear to reciprocate Specimen 2’s sexual attraction,” Scientist 3 goes on. “But this is irrelevant. As long as Specimen 2 views Specimen 3 as an object of desire, he will remain invested in both protecting and impressing him—which should yield the behavior we want to see from them.”

You think of Sunshine off by himself, getting used to his new wingspan, practicing launching himself higher and higher into the air each time he snaps his wings; and wonder what it is the military plans to use that young enthusiasm to train him to do.

You think of Pineapple, tail rattling accidentally as he wiggles in play or suddenly stopping to stare in fascination at an odd sunbeam or an aerie swinging on its chain; and mentally recoil at the thought of him being an _object of desire_—a prize to manipulate quiet little Sunshine into doing what they want.

You think of Noodle. Curling up to snooze, or scratching at his flaking scales, or flopping down between the flight morphs with his little wings curled tight around his chest. “Why Specimen 1, then?”

“Because he has demonstrated homosexual inclinations.” The way Scientist 3 says the words is so clinically precise it almost sounds pathologizing. It feels like a slap on the face. (Even if hearing the word “homosexual” applied to a dorat _is_ momentarily disorienting, when it’s so natural to assume that’s the default in non-parthenogenetic species. It’s easy to forget that, by a biologist’s definition of the term, they _do_ have two sexes, not just two body shapes.)

“How do you _know_ that?” You would have noticed if any of your dorats had progressed past practicing their mating displays, and Noodle doesn’t even do that much.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed that he lounges with the flight morphs. When he watches spinetail morphs present their mating displays, his heart rate increases and eyes dilate in a manner indicating arousal, and his—”

“Okay.” You don’t want to hear more. You feel like you’re peering in someone’s bedroom window with night vision goggles. “But, what—what does that have to do with anything?”

“Had we chosen a heterosexual flight morph or spinetail morph, it could develop a sexual rivalry with the other two specimens,” Scientist 3 says. “A heterosexual spinetail morph could perceive Specimen 3 as an obstacle to obtaining Specimen 2’s attention; whereas Specimen 2 might perceive a heterosexual flight morph as a potential threat to his chances of wooing Specimen 3. However, a heterosexual flight morph will not demonstrate attraction to a homosexual spinetail morph, and a homosexual spinetail morph will not demonstrate attraction to a heterosexual spinetail morph, so neither Specimen 2 nor Specimen 3 will see Specimen 1 as a rival or vice versa. We can reap the benefits of Specimen 2’s attraction to Specimen 3 without concern that it will produce a schism with Specimen 1.”

You almost laugh at their bizarre, mating-obsessed logic. What are they going to do if one of the spinetails is bisexual, but hasn’t “demonstrated” his “inclinations” yet? What are they going to do if it turns out that Noodle likes lounging with the flights because he has as yet unrecognized intersex traits, and he suddenly sprouts a set of wings to rival Sunshine’s? What then?

But you can’t ask. You’re silent with horror.

Because dorats don’t act like that. They don’t develop sexual rivalries. If two set their eyes on the same mate, their competitions don’t escalate past wrapping their tails around each other and rolling around, or battering each other ineffectively with their wings and hissing until someone gives up. Often, the competition stops early when the potential mate demonstrates a willingness to produce an egg with each. Two competing over one would never escalate to the point where it would pose a threat to their ability to healthily cohabitate or cooperate.

Unless the dorats are in miserable, confined, stressed conditions. So stressed their natural empathy shuts down so they don’t have to feel their peers’ suffering, so miserable that losing a chance to mate means losing a chance at what may be the only pleasurable activity they’re allowed, so confined that they can’t flee from an infuriated rival or an unwanted mate. The kind of conditions found in illegal doratfighting pits or unlicensed breeding mills.

What the hell is the military putting their dorats through that they have to be concerned about sexual rivalries?

How the hell did their previous sets of dorats die, for this “compatibility” to be their top criteria?

What the hell are they going to do to Noodle, Sunshine, and Pineapple?

You look through the window in your office door, where you can see your dorats. You spot Pineapple first, trying to climb one of the chains anchoring an aerie to the ground by twisting about it and inching himself up. Noodle is sleeping in a pile of flights, one leg sticking up inelegantly. Sunshine you finally spot high above, peering over the side of an aerie, watching Pineapple climb. There is nothing you want more than to run out there, scoop the three of them up, and carry them somewhere far away.

But you can’t defy Controller 0. The best you could hope to do, now that you understand the military’s criteria, is try to suggest a better trio; but each and every little dorat out there is just as precious as Noodle, Sunshine, or Pineapple. You can’t sacrifice any of them in their stead.

The military representatives give you a moment. Then Scientist 2 takes back the dossiers. Soldier 1 says, “If you have no objections, we are prepared to take them now.”

You say nothing.

“Very well.”

###

You’d like to think that you’re putting on a good show of stoicism for the military representatives. But the moment you step outside your office, you’re swarmed by concerned dorats desperate to comfort you. Under the circumstances, it only makes you more miserable.

You reassure them as well as you can, push them off, and begin collecting the three… specimens.

Noodle flails when you scoop him up, but once it’s clear you plan to drape him over one shoulder, he clambers around to position himself: head draped over your chest, tail tip dangling past your butt, claws curled into your chain mail shirt for stability. He flicks his tongue at your chin in concern a couple of times, then droops down and almost immediately falls back asleep.

You have to shake the chain Pineapple’s climbing to get his attention, but he sees how Noodle’s laying and copies him on your other shoulder. He covers your head with one wing as he scrambles onto you, but once he’s settled he nuzzles against your cheek, attempting to cheer you up. You feel his confusion as he presses his head against yours.

You don’t even need to whistle to get Sunshine’s attention. He’s already watching you—or maybe watching Pineapple on your shoulder. You point at the ground and stamp a foot, and Sunshine, well-trained, glides down off his perch and flops at your feet. You don’t have any shoulders left for him, but he stays close, rubbing his head between your shins. Smaller dorats sometimes weave between their owners’ legs when they want their attention or want to comfort them; when they get too big for that, sometimes they do this instead. You rub him just behind his jaw, partially to thank him for the attention and partially to coax him out from between your legs so you can walk, and you take all three of them to the door where the military representatives are waiting.

Their ship is just outside. A compartment in the back is already open. At least the dorats aren’t going to be in separate cages. You pat inside the compartment, and Sunshine jumps up and in, followed by Pineapple slithering off your shoulder. Sunshine immediately huddles in a back corner, watching as Pineapple explores the space. You have to slide Noodle off yourself, and he stirs and sits up as you set him down.

“You three are getting adopted by the military,” you tell them. You feel guilty, like you’re lying to them, even though it’s not technically untrue and even if it was they wouldn’t understand you. “Be good for them, okay? The future of X depends on its soldiers.”

“Make your farewell quick,” Soldier 1 says stiffly. You’re probably lucky that you get to say farewell at all.

You force a smile, lean into the ship, and tug them close one by one to press your forehead against theirs. You focus your entire mind on your love for them instead of your worry. “Noodle. Sunshine. Pineapple.” You say their names as you’re touching them; this will probably be the last time they ever hear them. You pull back from Pineapple before he can pick up on your sudden sadness. “Stay safe.”

You step back and Soldier 4 closes the compartment.

You watch from the door as the ship takes off and disappears into the sky.

###

You never see them again.

###

That’s not true. If it _was_ true, it would be less painful.

Years pass. You have a daughter; she grows, takes over the family business, and has a daughter and a child of her own. You start giving talks about dorat behavior.

After one of your talks, a soldier waits in the back while the chairs empty and the people who lingered behind speak to you. Only when they’re gone does xe approach you. A generation has passed since you last saw xem, and xe looks far older; but you still recognize xir face instantly. An ache that you haven’t felt in years stirs in your chest again. “Soldier 1,” you say, nodding.

Xe nods back. “Specialist 8.” And before you can question the title, xe offers you a new clearance badge.

###

There’s a heavy, oppressive feel in the lab, although you can’t tell why. It’s clean, well-lit. There’s no signs of suffering. But the air weighs down on you anyway.

Maybe it’s because you’re on a moon. You’ve never been on a world with a sky that’s always black. You feel like you’re clinging to the side of a marble hurtling alone through the void.

Something about the oppressive feeling is familiar.

“At this point, we doubt the fact that you raised our specimens will give you any particular insight into them,” Specialist 3 tells you as xe escorts you down the hall. “We have, after all, been working with them for far longer than you knew them. But we’re very impressed with your expertise on dorat psychology.”

You’ve already been told that they’re still working with the three “specimens” you gave them. You’re relieved they’ve survived this long. They’ll be getting near old age by now. You wonder if they were ever allowed to interact with any other dorats. You wonder if the three of them were enough company for each other. Dorats that aren’t pets usually live in groups with at least a dozen adults, and pets benefit from regular opportunities to socialize with other dorats. Did they ever get those opportunities? Did they ever go outside? Did they give their flight morph enough chances to fly?

You suspect not. You don’t know why you suspect not. Something about the heaviness in the air.

As Specialist 3 approaches a massive set of double doors and slows down, you realize what about the heaviness is familiar: it feels like entering a doratfighting pit to rescue the captive dorats. This is what it feels like when dozens of dorats’ empathy have collapsed and crumpled in, forming a dense despairing ball of shut down and suppressed emotions. They can’t cope with their own misery, much less their peers’, and so they close in on themselves. Your hand flutters up to your head, pressing your temple where you can feel the psychic weight.

But this is so much heavier than you’ve ever felt before. There must be hundreds, thousands—"How many dorats are kept in this facility?“

Specialist 3 hesitates. "Just the three,” xe says. “Maybe some of the scientists have personal pets in their quarters, but I doubt it. They wouldn’t want to bring their pets to this environment.”

You don’t think xe’s talking about the airless moon. Xir gaze flicks to your hand pressed to your temple, and xe says, “You see what I mean.”

“This can’t be _just three_. How?”

“You’ll see. This is what you’re here to address.” Specialist 3’s hand hovers over the door controls. “Moment of truth,” xe says. “From here on out, everything you see is absolutely classified. Controller 0 values the secrecy of this information more than your life. If you tell anyone…”

You nod. You know. It was spelled out to you very explicitly. Any intel leaks that can be traced to you mean the execution of ME-319, ME-320, and ME-321: you, your daughter, your granddaughter. The termination of the ME matrilineage. Of course, you’ll never tell—but you’re terrified that someday, someone else might, and the blame will accidentally fall on your family. You would have refused to take this assignment if you could have; but you have to comply when Controller 0 comes knocking.

Specialist 3 nods and opens the door.

You step through and the weight closes in on your mind so heavily it feels like your vision is going black around the edges.

For a moment, you can’t understand what you’re looking at. The room resembles a ship hangar, but directly in front of you is what looks like a mountain of gold coins. No, not coins. Scales?

The mountain shifts.

You fall to your knees.

It’s a massive, monstrous mutant. Ugly knotted scars thicker than your torso run between its necks and down its chest. It’s all spines, and claws, and horns, and fangs—its fangs alone are half the length of your body. You didn’t know creatures this large could survive outside the vacuum of space. You can tell, just from looking at it, that it’s nothing but a weapon of mass destruction.

And it has three heads. And it has the broad wings of one flight morph and the long tails of two spinetail morphs. And it has numb, delirious despair in its eyes.

There are massive collars around each of its necks and cuffs around its ankles and tails; chains anchor each collar and cuff to the ground. In a grotesque parody of rings on fingers, piercings jab through its wing membranes and wrap around each of its phalanges; short chains connect the piercings to each other, forcing it to keep its phalanges together and its wings closed. It spasms and growls—its growl is so loud you can feel the floor beneath you vibrate—and then goes limp on the floor; and then spasms again; and whimpers; and goes limp again.

You try to ask a question, but all you can do is mouth the word, “_What_,” silently.

“Meet Monster 0,” Specialist 3 says. “Codename: King, if you prefer.”

You want to be sick. Of all the things you feared, never in your worst nightmares…

“You can see the problem,” xe goes on. “He’s totally shut down emotionally. We can make him move—we’ve got the technology to force him to move—but we can’t force him to _feel_ again. The experiment is only a partial success as long as his empathic abilities are turned off. If we have to, we can move forward with this alone. But I’ve seen your writing on rehabilitating doratfighting rescues; if there’s any way you can… Hey, where—?”

You’re not listening to xem anymore. You’ve found your feet and you’re rushing down the stairs so fast you miss a few steps and almost fall, heading for the main floor of the hangar—hangar? kennel? prison? You sprint for the heads of the mangled creatures. The other soldiers and scientists on the floor, seeing you approach—wearing a jingling chainmail tunic and a look of fury the likes of which Controller 0’s perfectly emotionally repressed soldiers would never display—dive out of your way.

You head straight for Monster 0’s faces.

Each face towers above you. Their heads are lying on the ground and you still have to look up to meet their eyes. They don’t look anything like themselves anymore. Their distinctive scales—the flaky white gold, the electric yellow, the spiky green-tinged brownish gold—all gone, replaced by a uniform dull, pallid brass. The heads, distorted and altered as they were forced to this unnatural size, could have come from triplets. If you hadn’t been told they were your dorats, you wouldn’t have recognized them.

The head on the monster’s right growls as you approach, bearing his fangs threateningly, but his eyes are glazed. The one in the middle flinches and squeezes his already shut eyes tighter closed, as if he can dream his way through this and wake up somewhere else. Only the one on the monster’s left manages to focus, looking at you tiredly, studying you.

You know then. You know.

“Oh, my babies.” You look up at them, between each of their faces, throat tight. “This isn’t you.”

The one on the left slowly leans in—does he recognize you? The right one’s eyes are beginning to clear.

You reach out to touch the left one’s snout, then the middle one. “I’m so sorry they did this to you. This isn’t who you are.”

Slowly, the right one drags his head toward you as well. The middle one’s eyes crack open tiredly. You can feel their exhalations washing over you in gusts; you hear their lungs roaring like wind through a canyon.

“Do you remember who you’re supposed to be?” You don’t hide any of your emotions from them this time. Love pours out along with pity and grief. You lean against them, one at a time, pressing your forehead to their snouts: Specimen 1, 2, then 3; middle, right, and left; and you tell them their names: “Noodle. Sunshine. Pineapple.”

Their eyes shoot wide open. An electric wave snaps over their skin, jolting you hard enough that you stumble back.

Two soldiers rush up to take your arms and tug you back, and for a moment you’re so disoriented you can’t tell if you’re being rescued or arrested. The vision-blackening pressure on your mind has lifted all at once, so fast you feel lightheaded. The three dorats lift their heads as high as their chains will allow them, looking at each other as though they’ve only noticed each other for the first time; or perhaps looking at themselves through each other’s eyes?

And then the rage hits you—like stepping outside at the most deathly hot peak of summer and walking into a wall of heat. Rage so thick it’s like a tangible force, rage so overbearing you immediately break out in a sweat.

Then they raise their heads, and they _sing_.

That’s the only word you have for it. It’s a sound like you’ve never heard before. Dorats coo, or croon, or caterwaul; but this is singing. Three notes, high and quivering; a discordant chord, tremolo, in clear soprano voices; a wail that nearly sounds Xilien.

Something in the chord pierces straight into your psyche. You can feel your heart break, your future vanish, your every reason for living shrivel up and dissolve. You lose everything in a second. All that’s left is keen, soul-throttling despair. Nothing matters. Everything is over.

From somewhere far outside the black hole in your mind, you hear soldiers who might not have expressed a single emotion in decades break down in sobs.

And still the dorats are singing like they’re trying to end the world. Their necks raised, their back arched, their legs straining, their wings trembling. One by one, the chains pinning their left wing shut begin to snap.

You sink past despair into apathy.

###

Your spirits are still low when you wake up in the med bay, but at least you’re no longer ready to die.

You remember what it felt like, though. You’ll always remember what it felt like.

You’re being tended to by Nurse 4. Once xe’s established that you’re of sound mind, xe places a call, and a couple of minutes later Soldier 1 and Specialist 3 come in.

They both look haggard. Soldier 1 has superficial scratches high on the side of xir neck where public officials in direct contact with Controller 0 get their implants. “Well done,” xe says wearily. “Controller 0 finds your technique questionable, but approves of your fast results. You’ll be sent home with high commendations—but don’t expect to be called in to do that again.”

Somewhere far away, you think you can feel anger, throbbing. Like the beginning of a pounding headache.

You process Soldier 1’s statement backwards and in pieces. “Again?” How many more were they going to put through that torture? And then: “Fast results? You—you knew? You wanted this? This…?”

You gesture at your own head, trying to somehow indicate the feeling of your entire life falling to pieces.

Specialist 3 clears xir throat. Soldier 1 glances away. “Among other things, our experiments aimed to enhance Monster 0’s inborn capacity to project emotions. Weaponize it, if you will.”

You can only gape at xem.

Specialist 3 says, “We had no idea he’d develop a means to project them vocally.” Xir voice is hoarse. “This is a… fascinating side effect of his modifications.”

“Although one that reduces his usefulness in vacuums,” Soldier 1 says.

Usefulness for what? What are they going to use them for?

You feel despair creep over you again.

###

As promised, you’re awarded a slew of high commendations from Controller 0 before you go home. You never speak of them again.

Controller 0 also assigns you a therapist with a clearance level high enough for you to speak freely about your experience. You only visit xem a few times. Once you pass Soldier 4 in the waiting room. You didn’t realize xe lives nearby. You didn’t realize xe had been on the moon.

It’s three more years before you, along with everyone else, see the news of the first planet conquered by X’s new living weapon, “King.” You tune out the hollow military propaganda singing their new weapon’s praises as you watch the footage brought back from that distant world. All you can see in the dorats’ eyes is hatred.

In another few years, your granddaughter becomes the first of your matrilineage in centuries not to take over the family dorat breeding business. Instead, she joins the military. Science branch. She received an invitation directly from Controller 0 itself.

She gushes about the opportunity to use your family’s dorat expertise to work with the famous Monster 0—and perhaps to help make and train more monsters. After all, “0” is the number reserved for prototypes. Rumors have been swirling for years.

Before she leaves for basic training, you pull her aside, take a risk that could endanger your whole family, and whisper Monster 0’s true names to her.

###

To the end of your life, you will fear that your meeting with your three dorats—your meeting with the thing they became—only made things worse for them.

You will never know that, years after your natural death, what you reawakened in them will give them the strength to escape.

**Author's Note:**

> Original post available on [tumblr](https://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/187336881682/specimen-1-specimen-2-specimen-3-monster-0). Comments/reblogs there are very welcome (as are comments here)!


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